Censorship in WWE shows has been a topic that is being talked about a lot these days. Recently, Triple H commented on this and stated that censorship will not be an issue once Raw moves to Netflix in 2025. The topic was hotly debated when the censorship happened on SmackDown on Friday. WWE fans watching in the USA were left staring at a black screen on several occasions this week and apparently, some in WWE are fed up with Fox’s insistence on completely cutting out everything that could be considered even slightly offensive.
Why Fox censored this week’s SmackDown?
The most notable moment of the show that fans in the USA missed for a while came when Nia Jax was walking to the ring. The screen went black and when the feed came back, Bianca Belair surprisingly appeared behind “The Irresistible Force.” Since SmackDown feeds outside the United States are not subject to these cuts, the reason for Fox censoring them has been shared.
The uncensored clip shows a young fan in front of the audience flipping Jax off on the left side of the screen. If we look at the clip, then it seems that even if it aired unedited, no one would have noticed it. Fox brought out the censors again later in the evening when Tyrese Haliburton was shown on screen. The vociferous crowd in MSG started chanting “F#*k the Pacers and so Fox censored them.
Raw gets censored several times too
WWE RAW, which airs on the USA Network, also gets some level of censorship, but not as much as SmackDown. Fox seems to be a little more sensitive about what it wants to air on its network and what it doesn’t. When sports programs are live, channels have to take a certain amount of risk with them. Sometimes fans start chanting things that shouldn’t be said, but rather than cutting to a black screen, it would be better to mute them. The censorship is definitely annoying for WWE, but because their deal with Fox ends in four months, they wouldn’t care too much about it.
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